


We won't run, we're here to stay, we're still the same

by alchemise



Category: King and Lionheart - Of Monsters and Men (Music Video)
Genre: Gen, Loyalty, Post-Apocalypse, Rebuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:20:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24341209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alchemise/pseuds/alchemise
Summary: She had earned the Lionheart and so she would be the Lionheart, Protector to the King, and all else that came before wasn't worth thinking about.This was especially true now that their world had ended.
Relationships: King & Lionheart (King and Lionheart Song)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 2
Collections: Jukebox 2020





	We won't run, we're here to stay, we're still the same

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lexigent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lexigent/gifts).



She wasn't always called the Lionheart. She'd had another name once, Mara, and the Lionheart was technically intended to be a title, not a name. But as soon as it was bestowed upon her, she'd left behind her old name like a forgotten acquaintance who hadn't been worth remembering. She became someone important then; she mattered. She had earned the Lionheart and so she would be the Lionheart, Protector to the King, and all else that came before wasn't worth thinking about.

This was especially true now that their world had ended.

**********

One of the most frustrating, yet oh so tiny and insignificant, aspects of their journey was that she did not know the names of the places they traveled through. Theirs were not a traveling people, and she had never been outside Vellenar before.

Early on, she had asked her king whether he knew the places they encountered, but he only ever shrugged, out of ignorance or disinterest she couldn't tell. He seemed to barely speak at all anymore.

So she did her best to come up with names herself, as a way to remember their journey better. She knew that she'd never be praised for her creativity, but at least she would be able to tell their story as accurately as possible.

Assuming they ever met someone for her to tell it to.

**********

It was in the Forest of the Floating Trees that they encountered their greatest challenge since leaving Vellenar. It was there that the Lionheart almost lost her king.

She'd never known that trees could attack people, and so she hadn't been looking out for them. A most foolish assumption that she knew to never make again. The world was unpredictable—now, more than it ever had been before—and she still had her king to keep safe.

Ignorantly, she had thought the trees were an unusual but pleasant background feature. They floated in the air, anchored to the ground only by their thin but strong roots, clutching for purchase in the earth below. The Lionheart idly wondered what made them float, but there were many mysteries in the world that she did not understand. These just seemed like yet another among them.

It was only when a branch wrapped itself around her arm as she pushed through a grove that she understood there was more to this forest than odd gravity.

She quickly jerked her arm away, but the tree's branch did not budge. It gripped her tightly and more than a little painfully, as more of its branches snaked toward her. She'd retained her sword, in spite of everything they'd been through in the Cataclysm, and hacked at the branch around her arm. It retracted immediately, an eerie rustling sound the only other reaction from the tree. The Lionheart looked around in alarm as other tree branches moved toward her and her king.

It was not an easy battle.

For a moment, she thought that she had failed her king and failed herself, as branches looped around the both of them. He reached out a hand to her, the desperation clear on his face, as he was pulled up into the air. She strained up toward him with her only free arm.

Their fingers just missed.

The Lionheart screamed in frustration and wrenched her arm down to grab the knife she kept in her boot. It was a small knife, and the trees' branches were thick. But she hacked at them with all her might until she was free and then leapt into the air to grab her king's still reaching hand, pulling herself up with him to cut at the branches holding him aloft.

It worked, and eventually the trees gave up on them. She even welcomed the fall back to the ground, as it meant they were free.

As they finally left the forest, limping along the both of them, as close to unharmed as she'd been able to manage it, she heard a noise in the sky.

Her king spoke, sounding exhausted but whole, "It's Calaba. Some of them got out in time."

The airships passed over their head, gracefully cutting through the sky. There were six of them. They must have gotten warning of the Cataclysm from Vellenar or another country that had been hit earlier. The Lionheart envied that so many of the Calabian people must have survived to be operating that many ships. But she'd done her duty, at least, and her king was alive. Together, they were all that remained of their home.

**********

The few people they encountered on their journey seemed to have lost all kindness. The Lionheart supposed that the Cataclysm had turned them mean, for she did not like to think that the world had been this way before. But then, she'd known little of the world.

After doing battle with yet another band that sought the few supplies they carried with them, the Lionheart longed for the airships they'd seen. Surely the Calabians weren't facing such hardships on their journeys to find a new home.

She drove the tip of her sword into the ground, as the last brute died before her, frustrated by the need for such violence. "Why do you do this??"

Behind her, she heard her king sheath his own weapon. "They know no better, Lionheart. They see only cruelty in the world, so they act on such in turn."

"But there are better ways, aren't there?" She was beginning to have her own doubts. The world seemed so hard now.

He laid a hand atop hers on her sword hilt and faced her. "Yes, and we will find a place that we can live in those ways again."

"A new home?"

"Yes, a new home." He patted her hand softly and then reached down to take a water jug from one of the dead.

She wiped off her sword and then sheathed it, before following suit searching the bodies. They could afford no waste these days. She only hoped her king was right about what lay ahead.

**********

Some weeks later, she watched her king falter before an enemy even she could not fight.

They were climbing a mountain pass—the Windy Grey Mountains, the Lionheart called them—when the ghosts appeared. It had been a treacherous path, but compared to the challenges they'd previously conquered, it felt almost like a break to her. Just a walk up a very large hill, nothing more. They had reached what she thought might be the high point of the pass, and she saw the first ghost.

It looked like her sister, before she'd fallen to the Cataclysm.

A part of the Lionheart wanted to step forward and embrace her, but she knew this wasn't real. Her sister was just a memory now, like all of Vellenar.

More ghosts appeared then. Family and friends, people she'd served alongside, random acquaintances from home.

The Lionheart watched them, somewhat unnerved but no more than that. They were dead, after all; they couldn't harm her or her memories of them.

But she watched her king fall to his knees, sobbing and broken by what he saw. He looked so young and so lost. She understood then why the protector to the king took the name Lionheart and not the kings themselves.

She reached out and put her hand on his shoulder, drawing his attention. "My king, what you see is not real. They cannot hurt you; only your mind can."

He turned a tear-streaked face toward her. "We've lost _so much_."

She smiled, sadly, but remained standing strong. "Yes, my king, but we are still here."

**********

When she first spied the lake, looking down from a break in the forest as they made their way out of the mountains, she thought for just a moment that it might be a dream. It was so beautiful: an iridescent pool, surrounded on three sides by cliffs pushing up toward the sky, with waterfalls dotted along their surface, feeding into the water below. She counted ten and named it such: The Lake of the Ten Waterfalls.

"Do you see it?" her king asked, pointing toward the shore at the only side without cliffs marking its edge. There was hope tinged in his voice, a hope she had not heard in a long time.

The Lionheart realized what he'd spotted. There was a village. They were still a good distance away, but she saw what looked like a dozen structures and an open area nearby, perhaps for farming.

The Lionheart urged her king toward caution as they approached it—it had been a long time since they'd been among friends—but any worries she held were soon banished as what looked like the entire village came out to greet them. They were the most random group of people she had ever seen: from every land that had ever visited their court at Vellenar and some who looked like no people she'd ever known. They were clearly survivors, like her and her king.

Her king stared at them, smilingly brightly in a way she'd thought he'd forgotten how to, but he didn't say anything.

One woman stepped forward from the villagers and said what the Lionheart realized was "welcome" in many different languages.

If her king would not speak, the Lionheart would do so for him. Hoping the woman understood the tongue of Vellenar, she said, "Thank you, kind folk. This is the King of Vellenar, and I am the Lionheart, Protector to the King."

The woman responded in turn, "You are most welcome here, King and Lionheart. Vellenar is so far away; we feared none had survived from your land."

Her king finally spoke, softly. "We are all that is left."

"You may tell us your story, if you like, as it is a story we are all familiar with."

The Lionheart couldn't resist her curiosity. "What is this place called?"

The woman looked proud, at what they had built there, even if it wasn't much. "We call this Ma Ch'n."

The Lionheart almost laughed, for she knew those words from traders to Vellenar. It meant "Many Waters." Apparently someone here shared her knack for naming.

**********

The Lionheart and her king had been in the village for a fortnight. They were settling in well, and although her king had given no indication that he intended to step up and rule these people, she figured it was only time. He was a king, after all.

She heard sounds from down by the lake as she exited her tent one morning, just before dawn. Curious, she went to investigate. The Lionheart found a handful of the other refugees gathered at the shore, pointing excitedly. As the sun began to crest the cliffs on the other side of the lake, she could see clearly what had drawn their attention.

The lake had turned black.

The Lionheart found herself alarmed by this change in their only source of fresh water.

Then some small creature burst through the water, leaping up into the air before splashing back down. A dozen others followed it, and the villagers burst into laughter.

She looked toward them with confusion, before a small girl, Tylo, noticed the concern on her face. "It is okay, Lady Lionheart! It is from the moons last night!"

The Lionheart remembered the strange converging of the moons the previous evening. As they'd come into alignment overhead, they had made the entire lake sparkle with silver light.

The girl's mother clarified, "The moons bring the choajin that you see. They are awakened once a month when the moonlight turns the algae black. They seek the sun to dance in, then will return again to the deep. This is no bad thing, Lionheart. It is just what the lake does. We avoid the water for a day, until it settles again, then it will be back to normal."

The Lionheart smiled at the strange marvels of this place they'd found. She had to tell her king right away.

She ran up the hill and burst into his tent, but only got as far as saying "My king!" before he interrupted her with a cry and all thought of the water creatures vanished from her mind.

"No, please, Lionheart, you cannot keep doing this to me! I am not your king; I am no one's king anymore!" He buried his face in his hands, sobbing, for only the second time she'd seen in all the years she'd served him. Their journey had changed him in ways she was only beginning to understand. She wanted so badly to comfort him but held her ground instead.

"Do you want me to go, my…" She strangled her question off without finishing the last word, having no other way to address him.

He looked up at her, his face a mess of different emotions she couldn't identify. When he spoke, he sounded lost. "No, please. I don't know how to do this without you. I may not be your king, but you are still my home. All that it was is in you."

She felt herself blush at his words but kept her face placid; she would not embarrass him. She kept to practicalities instead. "What should I call you, then?"

He smiled at that, the tiniest hint of hope in his eyes. "My name was once Eyim, back when I was just a boy and not a king. I think I'd like to be that again."

"Eyim." The word was strange on her tongue. No one had ever used a king's given name once he or she gained the crown in Vellenar. The king was the kingdom. The price of rule was to lose one's individuality, one's name. She had never heard of a king regaining theirs, but then, times were very different now. Then an ugly thought entered her mind. "Should I no longer be the Lionheart?" She hated the idea. She did not want to go back to being Mara. She had earned her name and did not know who she would be without it.

Eyim (the name would take getting used to, but she would make sure to think of him as nothing else from now on) shrugged, but kindly. "That is your decision, not mine."

She considered their lives here that they were creating from nothing, surrounded by peoples from all corners of the world, survivors like them come together and building something new. "There are people here with many strange and unusual names. They all belong. I do not think Lionheart will stand out among them."

He gave her an inscrutable look—the fact that as well as she knew him, he could still do so amazed her—and said, "We shall see, Lionheart."

**********

A villager, Frox'l, ran up to the Lionheart and Eyim's tent one day as they shared their breakfast. He looked terrified. For the first time since they'd arrived there, the Lionheart feared for the refuge they'd found.

"Lionheart! There are attackers coming! Our scouts sent word they were but a day's hike away. Please, come, we need you to tell us how to stop this!"

The Lionheart set down her food. "Why me?" She would help, of course, but surely there was a better choice to take change of such efforts.

Frox'l looked surprised at her doubts. "You are the Lionheart, are you not? With such a name, you must be a great leader and warrior. And you arrived to us unharmed. You guided your king through the northern wastelands. No one has come through such ways since the Cataclysm began. You must lead us now."

The Lionheart thought about his words. She'd never considered such things before, as her role had always been clearly defined. She was to keep the king safe, but that was the limit of her duties. A part of her, though, knew deep down that this villager was right. At the very least, she did know how to help them. She spoke with reassuring confidence, "I will show you how to defend the village. We will turn back these attackers."

The villager nodded in relief. As she followed him out the tent, she realized that she hadn't looked to Eyim for approval, for the first time in so long. She turned back and looked at him now, trying to figure out what she felt toward this new responsibility she'd just claimed: protector of the village—perhaps their new home—not just protector of one man. She gave him a quizzical look. He smiled in return, seeming satisfied and unsurprised.

She nodded at the man who'd once been her king and was now her friend, then followed Frox'l. She had work to do.


End file.
